Asus A8V Deluxe - Adding HD

I built my computer about 3 years ago and have a Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard with 2 sata harddrives (no raid configuration, just 2 normal drives). I have since run out of space and purchased a new WD10EACS. I placed the jumper to limit it to a 1.5gb transfer rate (on jumpers 5+6), however I cant seem to get windows xp to recognize the drive.

My 2 old drives are in the 2 stacked SATA ports next to the VIA chip. I put my new harddrive into the port 1 of the 2 side-by-side SATA ports.

My question: How do I get my computer to recognize the drive and just allow me to use it for storage? I dont need any raid set up, just plain old storage.

Not sure of the exact particulars but I'd bet there's a setting in BIOS for the secondary drives that you'll need to enable. The A8N's have this setting as do some of the newer boards though they're not VIA chipsets. Still, if you haven't tried enabling the secondary drives give it a shot - can't hurt anything ...

QuietIce said:

Not sure of the exact particulars but I'd bet there's a setting in BIOS for the secondary drives that you'll need to enable. The A8N's have this setting as do some of the newer boards though they're not VIA chipsets. Still, if you haven't tried enabling the secondary drives give it a shot - can't hurt anything ...

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Do you have any pointers as to what I am looking for in the BIOS. I was looking through it and nothing really jumped out at me. Also, the harddrive is plugged into the "SATA Raid 1" slot and the "SATA Raid 2" slot has nothing in it. Going into the fasttrack raid setup only allows me to select 1+0, however even doing that doesn't let me see the harddrive.

OK, d/l'ed the manual.

The Promise Controller has to be [Enabled] and set to [IDE Mode] for independent SATA operation. The Promise Controller is in the Advanced drop-down under "Onboard Devices Configuration" in the standard BIOS window ...

Ok, So I have had a busy couple of days. Anyway, I changed the settings for the promise controller to Enabled and the mode to IDE Mode, I still cant get my computer to recognize any drive I put on that SATA slot. I put my new HD into the 2nd via slot and it works just fine. This leaves me with my main HD (with windows installed in the VIA slot 1) and my new HD (storage#2) in VIA slot 2. I have my old HD (storage#1) in the Promise controller and the computer cant recognize.

Is there anything else that I need to enable in windows or bios or anything to get my computer to recognize both harddrives?

Would you like me to take pictures of my start up screens to make sure I have everything correct?

Just for grins try taking out a stick of RAM and rebooting - then put the stick back in and reboot. That should do a "soft reset" of the BIOS. Be sure to leave the drives hooked up like you want them with just the one drive on the Promise controller.


If that fails you might try putting a pair of HDDs on the Promise controller (leaving your main drive in VIA slot1). Maybe for some odd reason it wants two drives on there instead of one (though it should work with just one and the settings I gave above). I really dislike VIA chipsets ...